04/20/15

What Today’s American Politics Tells Us

By: Alan Carbua
Warning Signs

There is something very disquieting occurring in American politics today. Most dramatically, the Democratic Party is offering a candidate who is a moral cesspool filled with lies and a history of behavior that would render anyone unthinkable for the highest office in the land. Something is very wrong when Hillary Clinton is, at this point, the only candidate for President the Democrats will be able to vote for and, worse, an estimated 47% of them will vote for her.

What we are witnessing is a Democratic Party that has been debauched by decades of socialism, an economic and political system that has failed everywhere it was implemented.

By contrast, what is being largely overlooked is the wealth of political talent—Rubio, Walker, Paul, et al—that the Republican Party has to offer as an alternative. Instead of obsessing over the different aspects of its candidates, we should be celebrating the fact that voters will be able to choose someone of real merit for whom to vote.

While the brain-dead media talks about the Republican candidates, seizing on every small element of the policies they are individually offering for consideration, the contrast with Hillary Clinton widens into a gap as large as the Grand Canyon. Her campaign thus far has been an exhibition of media manipulation. She talks of “income inequality” as if it has not existed from the dawn of time and is based on the socialist utopia of everyone being equally poverty-stricken. Who wants to live in a nation where you cannot become wealthy if you’re willing to take the risks and work hard to achieve it?

It is this gap between those concerned with the very real threats to our nation’s security and welfare that lies at the heart of the months ahead in the long political campaigns. We can, at the very least, give thanks that President Obama cannot run again. We must, however anticipate that he will do everything in his power to initiate or expand policies that do not bode well for the nation.

Why anyone would vote for a party that foisted ObamaCare on us, driving up the costs of healthcare though numerous taxes and impacting the healthcare industry in ways that have already caused many physicians to seek retirement or be forced to process their patients as rapidly as possible to pay their bills? The fact that the Republican candidate Sen. Ted Cruz is calling for the repeal of ObamaCare is reason enough to give him serious consideration.

Similarly, conservatives resist amnesty programs that would load the voting rolls with those who entered illegally and now, because they’ve been here for several years, we are supposed to consider them comparable to those who did so legally. Republican candidates who resist this understand that a nation with no real citizenship standards and borders that do not close off easy access rapidly ceases to be a nation. At the same time, these illegals are competing for jobs with those who are legal by birth and naturalization.

It’s a wonder to me that this nation is $18 trillion in debt, has over ninety million unemployed, and the nation continues to “redistribute” money from those who are working to those who are not. These programs are a huge magnet for the illegals, but it is the states that must struggle to fund their educational systems and Medicaid. Meanwhile our infrastructure goes old and in need of repair.

Beyond our shores, thanks to the foreign policies of the President, the United States is no longer the leader of the free world. As the Middle East slips into anarchy Obama wants nothing more than to give Iran the right to have its own nuclear weapons with which to pursue its hegemony of the region. Lift sanctions? Why would we want Iran to have more money to fund the terrorism that it uses to expand its influence? Closer to home, White House efforts to accept Cuba ignores its dictatorship, its record of providing weapons to our enemies, and years of hostility.

This represents a deliberate effort to undermine and weaken the moral principles on which our nation has been founded and risen to leadership in the past. Who is more widely criticized in our society than the evangelicals who have high moral standards and the Tea Party movement that is seeking to slow the obscene growth of the federal government?

We need to worry about a nation where marijuana is legalized and thus able to affects the mental capabilities of those who have used it since its heyday in the 1960s? Where is the need to reexamine the moral issues involved in the murder of babies in the womb? From 1973 through 2011, there were nearly 53 million legal abortions nationwide. In 2011, approximately 1.06 million abortions took place.

In March I noted that “More than a quarter of births to women of childbearing age—defined here as 15 to 44 years old—in the past five years were cohabiting couples, the highest on record and nearly double the rate from a decade earlier, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2011 to 2013.”

“And here’s a statistic that really caught my attention: “Cohabiting parents now account for a clear majority—59%–of all births outside marriage, according to estimates by Sally Curtin, a CDC demographer. In all, 40% of the 3.93 million births in 2013 were to unmarried women.” Moreover, “It is mostly white and Hispanic couples who are driving the trend, not black couples, experts say.”

This speaks to the breakdown of the institution that is most essential for a healthy, successful society, the dissolution or downgrading of marriage and the births that occur outside of it.

American politics—always a national debate on where we are and where we’re going, is critical to the future. Right now America is at risk of becoming a place where our founding morals, values, and traditions are being cast aside.

Your vote was never more important.

04/20/15

Forum: Should Federal Laws On Marijuana Be Changed?

The Watcher’s Council

Every week on Monday morning, the Council and our invited guests weigh in at the Watcher’s Forum with short takes on a major issue of the day, the culture or daily living. This week’s question: Should Federal Laws On Marijuana Be Changed?

GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD: Certainly there is some kinda way to decriminalize weed without legalizing. As best understood, a first marijuana-possession offense is punishable by up to six months in jail, a fine of $1,000, or both. Considered as a serious misdemeanor.

Some reform ideas include that if a cat possess five or fewer grams, they would only be liable for 30 days in jail, a fine from $65 to $625, or both. It would also be classified as a simple misdemeanor.

Perhaps the best thing would be to confiscate the weed and give a ticket not unlike a traffic violation. Sans jail time (after all the courts are jammed up beyond repair with way more serious chiz than ppl having a laugh and getting all groovy).

If busted while operating a vehicle – the auto insurance corp in question could be notified granting higher rates for cats that dig smoking rides.

Bookworm Room: I hate marijuana. I hate the way it smells. And I hate the way it makes people boring and unambitious. Having said that, I don’t think we’ve done much good treating it as a criminal enterprise over the past many decades. The result is that it’s become a romantic outlaw drug that most young people think is harmless, when it should have been subject to the same degree of opprobrium as cigarettes. After all, in both cases, people are sucking damaging carcinogens into their bodies.

If it were up to me, I’d subject it to the same legal restrictions as alcohol and cigarettes, and then I’d work hard to educate people about its myriad downsides. I’d also allow science to study carefully whether it really does have upsides in pain and disease management or whether those upsides are just part of the same romantic outlaw mythology. If marijuana really does have medicinal virtues, they should be encouraged as part of the range of choices available to people with health problems.

JoshuaPundit: It all depends on what your objective is. The fact is that for the most part prohibition doesn’t really work unless people elect to to do it themselves. That’s particularly true for marijuana, and there are some important reasons why.

First, pot is not only easy to obtain (easier than alcohol in a lot of places for those under a certain age), but it’s an aphrodisiac.

I myself preferred other drugs for the same reason I never smoked cigarettes. I simply didn’t like the feeling of smoke going into my lungs. But I frequently had marijuana around simply because a lot of girls really liked it, especially as a prelude to other activities. Faced with prohibition versus hormones, which do you think people are going to choose? Not only that, but almost everybody thinks they’re indestructible at eighteen, no? So much for any lectures about health considerations.

Second, selling narcotics is a business, and that includes the new legal ‘medicinal’ weed too. In California, one of the few growing pieces of the economy is small ‘clinics’ where you can buy marijuana provided you have a prescription. They’re almost as common as McDonald’s. L.A. Weekly has pages of ads from doctors offering the prescriptions. They’ll prompt their customers on what to say about their ‘symptoms,’ generate a prescription and for a going rate of about $35, you have a pass to buy weed legally. And the state, city and county get nifty licensing fees, business taxes and sales taxes.So money talks, which is why changing Federal law is meaningless one way or the other.

Selling illegal narcotics is a big business too. And the same thing applies.

Hezbollah, Islamic State, the Taliban and Hamas all use the profits on illegal narcotics to fund their operations, just like other criminal groups like the Mafia, the Triads, the Mexican Cartels, The Union Corse, the Hell’s Angels and other similar groups do. The profits from illegal narcotics also fund other lucrative activities like human trafficking, sex slavery, kidnapping, murder for hire and protection rackets as well as Islamist terrorism for the usual suspects. There’s a good reason Hezbollah has its headquarters in Lebanon’s Bek’aa Valley, one of the prime drug growing regions in the world.

Some of you might recall what happened to Bill Clinton’s Surgeon General Jocelyn Elder. Like most of Clinton’s appointees she was looney tunes, but she manged to get this one right. All she had to do was merely suggest we should at least look at the logistics of legalizing all narcotics and providing them free in detox clinics versus the billions we were spending on the War on Drugs, the cost of crime and the huge, swollen criminal justice and law enforcement monolith we erected as a byproduct.

I guarantee you the phone calls went out that night, not from some guy in named Guido in a sharp suit with a pinky ring but from legitimate donors who got a call from someone who got a call from someone else whom knew and owed Guido. The Democrat-dominated congress erupted and got her slapped down hard in a matter of days.

Like I said, big business and it’s all part of a chain.

Your friendly local dealer is usually part of the chain too. Unless he’s dealing in very minute volumes and goes unnoticed, sooner or later he gets a visit from the marketing reps of whomever owns the territory he’s in. And after things are properly explained to him, he’s allowed to continue operating provided he kicks a percentage back upstairs. That’s also why most independent dealers also know exactly where to get whatever other adult refreshment you might want beyond weed.

But if the idea is reducing drug consumption, we see a way that self-prohibition could work, By educating young consumers in graphic detail on exactly what their guilty thrill is paying for and what its supporting, complete with pictures, there’s an even chance of cutting down the consumption of illegal drugs substantially…by making buying them uncool and socially unacceptable to those budding lil’ social justice warriors.

The Glittering Eye: I’m of mixed minds. I think the advantages of legalization are being tremendously over-estimated and the downside risks even more tremendously under-estimated.

However, I also think that legalization is inevitable so we’d be better off devoting our energies to trying to figure out what the societal implications of legalization will be rather than to fighting it.

Well, there you have it!

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04/20/15

Is the GOP becoming the Gay Old Party?

Contact: Cliff Kincaid, [email protected] 443-964-8208

A national press conference on April 21, 2015, in the Zenger Room of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. will highlight Republican surrender in the gay marriage fight coming before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The event, to be held from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., is sponsored by America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI) and formally titled “Crimes against Nature and the Constitution: Cultural Marxism and America’s Moral Collapse.” The event is open to the press and the public.

ASI President and conference organizer Cliff Kincaid, said, “The Republican Party, under the influence of high-priced consultants, has proven to be incapable of understanding, let alone combating, cultural Marxism and the liberal media elites. Our conference will explain the assault on traditional values that is now going before the Court.”

In addition to Kincaid, the speakers will include Dr. Alan Keyes, founder of Loyal To Liberty; Peter LaBarbera, President, Americans for Truth; Matt Barber, constitutional attorney and founder of the BarbWire website; and James Simpson, the investigative journalist.

Kincaid’s recent video, on how President Obama has admitted being “schooled” as a young man by a communist in Hawaii named Frank Marshall Davis, has gone viral on YouTube, with about 180,000 views in just six days.

A veteran journalist and media critic, Kincaid has also just released two new videos exposing how he was nearly thrown out of a gay journalism fundraiser in New York City, as he was filming a male stripper at the event. Media celebrities, including CNN President Jeff Zucker, were at the affair helping raise money for the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association.

Kincaid said he plans to identify the “Republican” billionaires who are now either endorsing or pumping millions of dollars into the campaign to normalize homosexual activity, even “gay marriage.” He says the result of this well-funded campaign, if successful, will be to destroy the winning Reagan coalition of social, economic, and foreign policy conservatives. “Some Republican Party elites are trying to marginalize and isolate traditional conservatives – as well as drive millions of Christians out of the Republican Party,” Kincaid said.

The National Press Club is located at 529 14th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20045